C program to calculate the standard deviation

Standard deviation is used to measure deviation of data from its mean. The mathematical formula to calculate the standard deviation is as follows −

$$s=\sqrt{Variance}$$

where

Variance$$=\frac{1}{n}\:\:\displaystyle\sum\limits_{i=1}^n (x_{i}-m)^{2}$$

and

$$m=mean=\frac{1}{n}\:\displaystyle\sum\limits_{i=1}^n x_{i}$$

Algorithm

Refer an algorithm given below to calculate the standard deviation for the given numbers.

Step 1 − Read n items.

Step 2 − Calculate sum and mean of the items.

Step 3 − Calculate variance.

Step 4 − Calculate standard deviation.

The logic used in the program for calculating standard deviation is as follows −

for (i = 1 ; i<= n; i++){    deviation = value[i] - mean;    sumsqr += deviation * deviation; } variance = sumsqr/(float)n ; stddeviation = sqrt(variance) ;

Example

Following is the C program to calculate the standard deviation for the given numbers −

#include <math.h> #define MAXSIZE 100 main( ) {    int i,n;    float value [MAXSIZE], deviation,    sum,sumsqr,mean,variance,stddeviation;    sum = sumsqr = n = 0 ;    printf("Input values: input -1 to end 
");    for (i=1; i< MAXSIZE ; i++) {       scanf("%f", &value[i]);       if (value[i] == -1)       break;       sum += value[i];       n += 1;    }    mean = sum/(float)n;    for (i = 1 ; i<= n; i++) {       deviation = value[i] - mean;       sumsqr += deviation * deviation;    }    variance = sumsqr/(float)n ;    stddeviation = sqrt(variance) ;    printf("
Number of items : %d
",n);    printf("Mean : %f
", mean);    printf("Standard deviation : %f
", stddeviation); }

Output

When the above program is executed, it produces the following output −

Input values: input -1 to end 2 4 6 8 12 4.5 6.7 0.3 2.4 -1 Number of items: 9 Mean: 5.100000 Standard deviation: 3.348300